7 Best Small Towns in North Carolina For A Weekend Escape

Edenton runs the colonial-history weekend along the Albemarle Sound. Banner Elk runs the ski weekend on Sugar and Beech mountains from late November through March. Highlands runs the mountain-summer weekend at 4,118 feet while the Piedmont bakes. Chapel Hill runs the college-town weekend with Tar Heel basketball, Franklin Street, and three independent breweries inside one walking loop. Seven North Carolina towns, seven different weekends.

Edenton

Edenton was North Carolina's first colonial capital (from 1722 until New Bern took the title in 1743) and sits on the Albemarle Sound at the head of Queen Anne's Creek. The 1767 Chowan County Courthouse, a National Historic Landmark, is the oldest courthouse still in use in North Carolina and one of the most intact Georgian public buildings in the country. The 1886 Roanoke River Lighthouse, the last surviving screw-pile lighthouse on the Carolina sounds, was relocated to the Edenton waterfront in 2007 after spending more than a century on Edenton Bay. The self-guided Edenton Museum Trail strings together the major sites, all walkable from downtown.

The Edenton Cotton Mill Historic District preserves 57 mill houses, an industrial building, a church, and a museum from the village built by the early-20th-century mill. For an active weekend, local outfitters rent kayaks for the Albemarle Sound and the Elizabeth River. The 1751 Edenton Tea Party, when 51 local women signed a public resolution against British tea, is widely considered the first political action by women in colonial America; the bronze teapot on a Revolutionary War cannon on the courthouse green commemorates it.

Manteo

Manteo sits on Roanoke Island just inside the Outer Banks and is the county seat of Dare County. The town wraps around Shallowbag Bay with a downtown waterfront of small shops, a working bookstore, a coffee roaster, and the Outer Banks Distilling rum operation. The Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse at the end of the boardwalk is a 2004 replica of the original 1877 cottage-style screw-pile light. Roanoke Island Festival Park, on the bay's north side, holds the Elizabeth II, a full-scale replica of the 1585 ship that brought England's first Roanoke colonists across the Atlantic.

Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, three miles north of downtown, preserves the location of the Lost Colony, the 1587 English settlement of 115 men, women, and children that disappeared without a trace by 1590. Paul Green's outdoor drama The Lost Colony, performed every summer since 1937 at the Waterside Theatre, is the longest-running outdoor symphonic drama in the country.

Highlands

Highlands sits at 4,118 feet on the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau in the southern Appalachians and is the second-highest incorporated town east of the Mississippi River (Beech Mountain takes first at 5,506 feet). Summer high temperatures average in the upper 70s while Atlanta and Greenville bake in the 90s, which is why generations of Southern families have summered here since the late 19th century. Bridal Veil Falls, Dry Falls, and Cullasaja Falls form a string of accessible waterfalls along U.S. 64 west of town inside the Nantahala National Forest.

The Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival fills July and August with classical performances, while the Highlands Playhouse runs its summer-season productions. The Bascom, a nonprofit visual arts center on a six-acre campus at the south edge of town, runs rotating exhibits and a major summer studio program. Fly anglers target wild rainbow and brook trout on the Chattooga and the Tuckasegee, both within a 30-minute drive of downtown.

Banner Elk

Banner Elk runs the High Country at the foot of Sugar Mountain (5,236 feet) and Beech Mountain (5,506 feet), the two southernmost downhill ski resorts in the eastern United States. Both open mid-to-late November and run through March; Beech Mountain is the only ski resort east of the Rockies that consistently breaks 100 inches of natural snow most seasons. The ski-school programs, equipment rentals, and short slope lines make this the most beginner-friendly ski weekend in the Southeast.

For warmer-season visitors, the Wilderness Run Alpine Coaster threads loops and dips through the forest along a fixed track. Grandfather Mountain State Park, a 15-minute drive away, includes the Mile-High Swinging Bridge (a 228-foot suspension bridge built in 1952 at 5,280 feet elevation). The Banner Elk Woolly Worm Festival each October draws thousands to watch caterpillars race for the right to predict the upcoming winter weather, with the winning worm's color bands "officially" forecasting the season.

Holly Springs

Holly Springs is a fast-growing Wake County town (population about 50,000, up from 9,000 in 2000) that has built a credible downtown around a few independent breweries and a strong public-space program. Bombshell Beer Company, owned and operated by three women co-founders since 2013, is one of the largest women-owned breweries in the United States. Holly Springs Brewing also serves locally crafted pours within easy walking distance.

The Holly Springs Cultural Center stages year-round theater, dance, and musical performances, with a free Wednesday-evening outdoor concert series each summer on the cultural center lawn. Bass Lake Park threads walking trails around a 47-acre lake with kayak rentals and a fishing pier. The Womble Park, Bass Lake, and downtown all connect via the town's expanding greenway system, which now exceeds 30 miles of paved multi-use trail.

Kitty Hawk

Kitty Hawk is the Outer Banks village where the Wright brothers had their mailing address and weather-station outpost; the actual December 17, 1903 flights happened four miles south at the Kill Devil Hills dunes, where the Wright Brothers National Memorial now stands with a 60-foot granite pylon, a reconstructed 1903 flight camp, and a visitor center built around full-scale replicas of the Wright Flyer. The Kill Devil Hills site is unincorporated when the Wrights flew there in 1903, so the town's postal mail came through the Kitty Hawk weather station, and the press credited Kitty Hawk in the dispatches.

The Kitty Hawk Woods Coastal Reserve protects over 1,800 acres of maritime forest, swamp forest, and ridge-and-swale terrain, with walking trails that cut through ancient wooded dunes. Public-access beaches line the oceanfront. The northernmost section of Cape Hatteras National Seashore starts just south of town and runs 70 miles down the barrier-island chain past Bodie Island, Pea Island, and Hatteras Island. Pair a sunrise beach walk with a sunset paddle through the protected sound-side waters and the weekend writes itself.

Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill is the home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the first public university in the United States to open its doors (it was chartered in 1789 and admitted its first student, Hinton James, on February 12, 1795). Franklin Street runs along the campus edge with the kind of independent bookstores, record shops, taquerias, and brewpubs that university towns get right when they get them right. The annual Halloween street party on Franklin Street routinely draws 50,000 people. The Ackland Art Museum on campus holds more than 21,000 works spanning ancient to contemporary art and is free to visit.

For outdoor space, the North Carolina Botanical Garden manages over 1,000 acres of nature trails and display gardens across the region, including the 100-acre Mason Farm Biological Reserve and the historic Coker Arboretum at the heart of campus. Local breweries Steel String, Carolina Brewery, and Top of the Hill all sit within easy walking distance of one another for a single-weekend brewery crawl. Tar Heel basketball is the only real local religion; the Dean E. Smith Center holds 21,750.

Seven Weekend Trips, One State

The seven towns above each give a different version of a North Carolina weekend. Edenton runs Colonial brick. Manteo runs Lost Colony archaeology. Highlands and Banner Elk run mountain altitude. Holly Springs runs a Triangle-area reset. Kitty Hawk runs Atlantic beach and aviation history. Chapel Hill runs the original American public university. Pick the season, pick the elevation, the right town is on this list.